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Leaving no one behind

Sustainable Development Goals and South-South Co-operation is the title of a stimulating and thought provoking book that Dainik Bhaskar, one of India’s leading Hindi dailies is bringing out in collaboration with the NITI Aayog, government of India’s think tank, and the Dialogue of Civilizations (DOC) Research Institute, an independent international think tank.

With a foreword from NITI Aayog CEO, Amitabh Kant, the book contains articles from thought leaders from the fields of establishment, diplomacy, private sector, civil society, international agencies, think tanks and academic institutions around the subject of ‘SDGs and South – South Cooperation’.

Edited by Deepak Dwivedi, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Dainik Bhaskar and Pooran C. Pandey, CEO of DOC, the book will be released by Amitabh Kant at India International Centre on November 9.

The volume begins with ‘special messages’ from Dr Vladimir Yakunin, Chairman of the DOC Research Institute, Kenyan High Commissioner to India, Willy Kipkorir Bett, India’s representative to UNESCO Executive Board, Dr J. S. Rajput and other dignitaries.

These are followed by three articles from Suchitra Durai, India’s current High Commissioner to Kenya, Siddharth Chatterjee the United Nations Development Programme Representative in Kenya, and Amitabh Kant that set the context.

Eminent contributors of other articles include Dr Bindeshwari Pathak, founder of Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, Ashok Sajjanhar, President, Institute of Global Studies and former Indian ambassador to Sweden, Kazakhstan and Latvia, Dan Banik, director of the Oslo SDG Initiative at the Centre for Development and the Environment, and Sandeep Chachra, Executive Director, ActionAid India.

Askok Kumar Pavadia, a former bureaucrat and a leading expert on public policy, has discussed the centrality of governance in achieving SDGs, while P. B. Sharma, vice-chancellor of the Amity University, has dwelt on South-South Cooperation in higher education and senior journalist, Onkareshwar Pandey, has discussed the role of digital driven media.

In their article, Mitos Ladikas and Julia Hahn of Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany and Jiri Dusik of UNDP have have emphasized the importance of global technology assessment in the context of the UN Agenda 2030.

Another view by Anirudh Chakradhar and Balakrishna Pisupati underlines the Indian options in localizing the SDGs, and Deepak Arora, Vice President (Public Affairs, Nayara Energy Limited) discusses the role of private sector in accelerating SDGs.

The epilogue by the book editors, Deepak Dwivedi, Pooran C. Pandey, and researcher Vaidehi Misra sets up the agenda for the future. The story that started with the MDGs, have translated themselves into the SDGs today. They are going to translate into another set of goals post the 2030. “Neither were the goals in the past, nor will the ones in the future, be met by the countries through their isolated efforts. Instead it is only through collaboration with other actors, such as that between the south and the south that the idea of leaving no one behind can become a reality,” it sums up.